Children’s cemetery in Sumqayit

The children’s cemetery in Sumqayit is a dark reminder of the high level of children born with birth defects. The Sumgayit cemetery reveals the tragic story that was hidden for so long during the Soviet period. Dead babies don't lie.

"A mixture of strange feelings came over me when I first heard about the children's cemetery in my home city of Sumgayit. Curiosity pushed me forward to learn more and I started to gather infor­ma­tion and asked the older gen­er­a­tions including my parents about the cemetery. But to my surprise, I got only scanty infor­ma­tion so far. My Internet searches ended up with poor results as well. Yet many trip advisors suggested the unique cemetery with an entire section of childrens' graves as a must see place in Sumgait. I decided to visit the cemetery. A col­lec­tion of little head­stones all of the same size and age made me feel depressed and melan­cholic. I talked to Mollah (title of respect used in Islamic countries for one who is learned in Islamic law) and he said that the cemetery is the final resting place for the children ranging between the age 1 to 5 years old. It is said that the plant producing lindane had fatal envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences and as a result children with poor health died. The plant was closed after two year of pro­duc­tion which took away so many innocent lives. The image in front of me was hard to com­pre­hend, it was painful to see that those little children would have been my age…"

The Symbol of Sumqayit

Abandoned bus stop.

"Sumqayit will turn into the big indus­tri­al city", Ilham Aliyev.

Sumqayit, one of the largest and youngest cities in Azer­bai­jan (after Baku and Ganja), located on 30 km away from the capital Baku on the Caspian coast, and founded on November 22, 1949, is home to one of the largest chemical indus­tri­al complexes in the entire former USSR.

"Sumgayit was a major Soviet indus­tri­al center housing more than 40 factories that man­u­fac­tured indus­tri­al and agri­cul­tur­al chemicals. These included synthetic rubber, chlorine, aluminium, deter­gents, and pes­ti­cides espe­cial­ly chloror­gan­ic products such as hex­ochlo­rine, DDT, Lindane, and caustic sodium. While the factories remained fully oper­a­tional, 70-120,000 tons of harmful emissions were released into the air annually."

Sumqayit is included in the world’s top 10 most-polluted cities in the world. This list was published in 2007 by the Black­smith Institute, a New York-based envi­ron­men­tal health NGO.

Many children were born with defects such Monoglism, anen­cephalia (no brain), spina bifida (absence of one or more vertebra arches), hydro­cephalus (enlarged head with excessive mount of fluid), osteochan­dro dystrophy (bone disease), and mutations such as club feet, cleft palate, four or six fingers or toes. Once a child was born with its heart on the right side. Others injure the heart, internal organs, bones, and teeth. Others suppress the immune system. Now I remember that when we were small, our haemo­glo­bin was below common standards, but the doctors said that it was normal for Sumqayit. The mutations such as four or six fingers or toes I have seen among my class­mates at school, who were born in this period of time.

As a result of the Soviet planning of the indus­tri­al boom era, the city became heavily polluted. The city was famous for the indus­tri­al and agri­cul­tur­al chemicals industry that led to the highest rate of child mortality and as many as 275,000 people have poten­tial­ly been affected by heavy metal and chemical con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in the city.

Sumqayit had one of the highest rates of cancer in the USSR that it was as much as 51% higher than the national average and genetic mutations and birth defects were com­mon­place according to a study by UNDP, WHO, the Azer­bai­jani Health Ministry and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alberta.

The city admin­is­tra­tion prepared an envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion plan from 2003–2010 which steadily helped to decrease the levels of pollution to minimal amounts. For instance, the amount of waste water from indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion went down from 600 thousand m3 during the 1990s to 76.3 thousand m3 in 2005. The gov­ern­ment used to com­pen­sate workers by providing milk, cheese, and meat to those at factories where toxicity was known to be high. Some changes have been made; still rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes are needed. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists have managed to get a few factories closed including the Lindane factory.

Azer­bai­ja­nis are proud of this city. They built it with their own hands during this century and they appre­ci­ate its ethnic mix of Azer­bai­ja­nis, Russians, Georgians, Jews, Udins, Lezghins, Moldo­vians, Ukraini­ans, Belarus­sians, Kurds, Talysh and Armenians (an estimated 200 still live in the city today according to the mayor).

Today, the majority of factories have been closed down and others were renovated by local state agencies such as SOCAR. But the city still bears the scars of its indus­tri­al past -- with heavy metals, oil, and chemical con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

Four cities in the former Soviet Union appear in Blacksmith's top 10. The others are Chornobyl in Ukraine, and Dzerzinsk and Norilsk in Russia.